Vague Visages’ Blackwater Lane review contains minor spoilers. Jeff Celentano’s 2024 movie on Peacock features Minka Kelly, Dermot Mulroney and Maggie Grace. Check out the VV home page for more film criticism, movie reviews and film essays.

Blackwater Lane is one of those predictable thrillers that masks its most obvious flaws with a poorly executed twist. Minka Kelly (Friday Night Lights) headlines Jeff Celentano’s 2024 film as Emma, an American woman who teaches high school students in England after inheriting her late mother’s home. She lives with her businessman husband, Matthew (Dermot Mulroney), who worries about his wife’s mental health (and possible early-onset dementia) as she investigates the murder of a local woman. Based on B.A. Paris’ 2017 novel The Breakdown, Blackwater Lane suffers mightily from pacing issues, uninspired acting and a flimsy screenplay.

Kelly, one of cinema and television’s most underrated beauties, looks like a true movie star in Blackwater Lane. Her stylish and charming character, dressed by costume designer Arianna Dal Cero, gains the attention of various supporting players with her literary aura, including a 15-year-old student (Judah Cousin as Andrew), a former flame (Alan Calton as John) and also her best friend, Rachel (Maggie Grace of Lost and Fear the Walking Dead). However, the film’s central conflict — Emma’s mental health — suggests that the protagonist might be looking for attention in her new environment. First, she complains about a property prowler after a late-night encounter with an eventual murder victim. Later, Kelly’s character suggests that someone infiltrated her home and tried to drown her in bathtub. And when the tarot card-reading Emma implies that she’s being haunted by her late mother’s ghost, well, her husband naturally worries about their future together. Despite Blackwater Lane’s strong cinematography, courtesy of Felix Cramer, Celentano’s direction is just too inconsistent, as various expositional sequences clearly needed to be trimmed and numerous flashback scenes should’ve been cut completely. In short, the director didn’t trust the audience to connect the most obvious dots.

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Many scenes in Blackwater Lane feel stiff and completely unbelievable. Kelly, with all her beauty and talent, appears lifeless (or unmotivated) in many scenes, perhaps because Celentano didn’t provide adequate directorial guidance for the moments in question. And so viewers are left with redundant sequences: Emma sees something bizarre and then sits in silence during close-up visuals. Where’s all the performative and directorial flair? Where’s the improvisation? All of Blackwater Lane’s jump scare moments don’t leave a mark, simply because the filmmaker and cast members don’t move outside their comfort zones. It’s just the same thing over and over again, at least until Celentano unveils a final act twist, one that’s both predictable and clunky.

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With all due respect to screenwriter Elizabeth Fowler, who adapted Blackwater Lane’s source material for the big screen, Kelly’s Emma doesn’t feel like a lived-in character. Celentano essentially drowns the audience with the core themes — mental health, familial trauma, relationship drama — but seems uninterested in developing the main characters while building to a too-clean narrative resolution. Does Emma actually have some serious problems to address? Or is she another cinematic Girl Boss who waxes poetic about perseverance without actually learning anything about herself beyond the obvious?

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Celentano should’ve swapped out 15 minutes of exposition in favor of character development sequences. Tell me more about Emma and her husband — characters who almost don’t feel like real people. Tell me more about the protagonist’s best friend and horny colleague. Where’s all the detail and backstory? Without believable characters, focused writing and inspired acting, the best directorial and purely cinematic moments likely won’t spark any post-movie discussions about Blackwater Lane’s primary themes.

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At this point, I know what Mulroney can do as an actor. In fact, I’ll probably always remember him as Dirty Steve Stephens from Young Guns (1988). And the aforementioned Grace is arguably Blackwater Lane’s Most Valuable Performer, even though viewers learn little about her character, at least beyond her primary wants and needs. And with Ms. Kelly, I’m still confused about her career trajectory and ability to truly immerse herself into a character since delivering a standout supporting performance in David Burris’ The World Made Straight (2015). She’s one of those rare actresses who can kill with pure sex appeal or pure charm (see Friday Night Lights or a smaller role in Euphoria), but it never seems like she loses herself in a role, at least in terms of displaying something new and just going for it. As an audience, we don’t need a performance akin to Demi Moore in The Substance (2024), but a little Margaret Qualley would be nice — expressive, edgy and unpredictable.

Blackwater Lane released digitally on January 27, 2025.

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Q.V. Hough (@QVHough) is Vague Visages’ founding editor. Thank you for reading film criticism, movie reviews and film essays at Vague Visages.